I just saw an advertising for a new format called Dolby Digital Plus, able to carry over 13 channels. It's the new standard for HD HDTV. It is supposed to be backards compatible. Is it really backards compatible? or are all our systems going to become obsolete soon? Does anyone know? Thanks.

Dolby Digital Plus is available on HD-DVD and Blu-ray, and while it is capable of 13.1 channels it is currently only implemented for 7.1 (and, for that matter, there's been no studio support for more than 5.1 so far). It is "backward compatible" from the standpoint that it can be output as multichannel analog or downmixed by the player to Dolby Digital 5.1 (although Toshiba's HD-DVD players are actually downmixing to DTS instead because it requires less compression). My HDMI FAQ (in my sig) has some more details - suffice to say that I don't think we're likely to see Dolby Digital and DTS become obsolete in the near future.

I have to say that the DD Plus tracks I've heard on HD DVD are quite good, adding just an additional bit of ambience and atmosphere (and openess) to the sound.

The winner, however, is DD TrueHD which is a lossless scheme that sounds superb. However, only a few of the HD DVD releases have these tracks.

Wow.. that's cool stuff.. but do we really need 13 channels of audio some day to watch a movie.. and we'll one day scoff at those that still only have 5.1 or 7.1?

Do hardware manufactures really have a pluse on what consumers what these days? Or are they just releasing anything they want, and suffer the consequences later?

Kind of like DVD-Audio and SACD. We now know who won that battle... SACD.

Seeing as studios aren't even using the seven offered by the new formats (all of the HD-DVD and Blu-ray releases to date have been 5.1), I doubt we'll see any widescale use of 13.1 anytime soon. It's more a matter of including the infrastructure because they can.

As for the DVD-A/SACD war, I'd question that either side won. New DVD-A releases have ceased, and while there are still some new SACD titles appearing they are almost entirely from smaller labels like Telarc - even Sony has pretty much left SACD for dead.

SACD releases to date is slightly over 4000. yeah.. i don't think DVD-Audio approached that at all.

kinda get the feeling that the ol' "quality not quantity" is going to come into play here pretty soon. I mean, even if 13 were possible, would it really be more than a gimmick? Why not 30 channels?

I don't see it at all. Besides could you imagine 13 speakers in your listening area. How congested would that be.

Sony? Really? Someone said that they're even omitting iLink on thier newest ES recievers too...

Blu-Ray buyers beware!

Sony is still supporting SACD on the hardware side (as are many others, mostly in the form of universal DVD-A/SACD players), but the last time I checked on the format their new disc releases had ceased. While it's true that SACD came out ahead of DVD-A, neither really "won" much of anything...